Technology | Media | Telecommunications

Friday, October 24, 2008

In-Stat conducted a survey of their Technology Adoption Panel to determine what devices road warriors -- defined as those who travel five or more days in a typical month -- travel with, and what interface options they use.

The results from 522 respondents show that these Digital Nomad travelers carry several devices, and stay connected through multiple interface options.

The results show that 85 percent travel with a notebook PC, 66 percent with a mobile phone, 43 percent with a smart phone (defined as a combination mobile phone and computing device), 53 percent with a headset, 38 percent with a portable media player, 21 percent with an external storage drive, and 17 percent with a PDA.

In terms of notebook connectivity, business travelers depend primarily on Wi-Fi, USB and Ethernet as their lifelines on the road. Wi-Fi was used by 93 percent of road warriors with notebooks, while USB was used by 84 percent and Ethernet by 72 percent.

Those using Wi-Fi in their notebook employed it to connect to a hotel hotspot wireless network (88 percent), or to connect to a public hotspot (60 percent). USB in the notebook was used to connect to a mouse or keyboard (66 percent), external storage (55 percent), smart phone (35 percent), or portable media player (34 percent).

As expected, the notebook Ethernet connection was used to connect to an external network connection (84 percent), with a smattering of external storage connections (6 percent) as well.

Within mobile phones and smart phones, the frequent travelers reported a variety of interface options, including 75 percent with Bluetooth, 52 percent with USB, and 39 percent with Wi-Fi.